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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, ! 



chap. _J£>R 3-X7 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

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TELE 



ENGLISH REFORMATION. 



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DELIVERED IN ST. ANN'S CHURCH 



ON 



SUNDAY EVENING, DECJEMBJBB.15, 1878, 



BY THE 



VERY EEV. THOMAS S. PRESTON, V.G. 



Stenographically Reported for the Publisher 




NEW YORK : 
ROBERT CODDINGTON, 246 FOURTH AVENUE. 

1878. 



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Y V 

Copyright, 18T8, 
By ROBERT CODDINGTON. 



SfENOGEAFHICALLY REPORTED BY J|R. E\ *T. ROBEiNS; 



LECTURE 



In the Apocalypse of St. John, the third chapter 
and the first verse, are these words: "I know thy 
works, that thou hast the name of being alive : and 
thou art dead." 

In this brief course of lectures upon the Protestant 
Reformation and its movement we devote a special 
lecture to the Reformation in England. There are 
several reasons why we should do so. In the first 
place, this movement directly concerns those of our 
own race and tongue, and therefore has an especial 
importance for us. Secondly, there were circum- 
stances connected with that Reformation which gave 
it an external appearance of conservatism, which did 
not belong to the movement upon the Continent. 
This was owing to the fact that the movement in 
England was a wholly civil one, with which the ec- 
clesiastical body had little to do, and the hand of 
the tyrant shaped its course and forced it to a certain 
degree of conservatism. Consequently the partisans 
of the English Church now make pretensions which 



4 

were never made in early days. They pretend that 
the Church of England reformed herself. In this re- 
spect they attempt to draw a distinction between the 
churches upon the Continent and their own church. 
The churches upon the Continent, say they, utterly 
destroyed themselves, and were engulfed in the move- 
ment that destroyed the essential features of the 
church and brought in infidelity ; but the Church of 
England took it upon herself by her powers as a 
church to reform herself, and at the end of that Re- 
formation she stood before the world in her primitive 
purity. So they contend that she preserved, amid 
the confusions of the Reformation, the essentials of 
a church and the hierarchy. We shall see, in the 
course of this lecture, how utterly contrary to the 
fact, and contrary even to the professions of the first 
Reformers in England, are such pretensions. But 
before I enter upon the body of this lecture I would 
call your attention to a remark that I made in the 
previous lecture. The very idea of consenting to the 
error of the church in a matter of faith is suicidal to 
the church itself, and no churchman who under- 
stands at all the nature of a church would ever 
agree that his church had fallen into such error ; for, 
as we argued, the church which errs is no church at 
all. It ceases to be a church by the very fact of its 
erring. Since the Church of Christ cannot err, it 



would be far more consistent, then, if the partisans 
of the Church of England would simply take the 
ground of other Protestants and relinquish their 
pretensions to ecclesiastical power. Protestantism 
for them would be then somewhat logical. By their 
pretensions they develop that most incomprehensible 
and contradictory system of religion which bears 
the name of Anglicanism. We shall see, in the 
course of this evening's lecture, how untrue are all 
their claims ; how the English Church had nothing 
whatever to do with what they call its Reformation ; 
how the actual supremacy of the crown extinguished 
its liberties ; and how in the hands of its royal mas- 
ter it became a slave and a tool. The points which 
we make in answer to the assertions of the Angli- 
can writers and teachers are as follows : 

First. The Reformation in England was a purely 
civil movement, forced by despotism upon an op- 
pressed and unwilling people, with which the eccle- 
siastical body had nothing to do. 

Secondly. Its beginning was in atrocious crime, 
and its end was plunder and violence. 

Thirdly. It was, as was the Reformation upon the 
Continent, the destruction of a positive creed and of 
unity of faith ; and 

Fourthly. The result was the establishment of a 
state church depending entirely upon the civil power, 



and having no connection with the ancient Church, 
neither by apostolic orders nor by jurisdiction. 



The Reformation in England was not the action of 
the Church, but of the civil power. It was, in fact, 
the enslaving of the Church and the extinction of its 
life. To prove this, we shall only develop the facts 
of history which show that the initiative in this 
movement was always taken by the crown ; that the 
purposes of the crown were accomplished in spite of 
the Church, and against the will of an enslaved peo- 
ple ; and, thirdly, that the voice of the Church, in 
council or by her bishops, was stifled, and all power 
to act destroyed. The King of England, Henry 
YIIL, had no sympathy with the Reformation or 
with the Reformers. He desired, however, the grati- 
fication of his passions ; and the whole cause of his 
rupture with the Holy See was the divorce of his 
wife, Queen Catherine. Inasmuch as the Holy See 
could not yield to his desires, nor break the law of 
God to please his will, his first step was to erect a 
royal supremacy, a thing unheard of in the annals of 
Christian history ; and secondly, to silence the Con- 
vocation, or council of the Church, and to accomplish 
his ends by a servile Parliament. To the oath of su- 



premacy forced upon his subjects we shall refer 
afterwards in this lecture. This oath gave the king 
complete and despotic control of the Church in all 
matters of discipline and of faith, and placed the ec- 
clesiastical body completely at his will. This was the 
end of the whole proceeding ; and while it sought to 
abolish the authority of the Vicar of Christ, it de- 
stroyed the very nature of a Church, and made the 
crown a despotic tyrant in things spiritual. With 
such an act of kingly supremacy no Church could 
live one moment ; and in it the rights of the English 
Church were wholly extinguished. I think there is 
no need of my delaying you by any argument upon 
this self-evident point. 

The first step of the king, when he had declared 
himself the royal master of the Church, was to 
silence the Church itself, to stop the mouth of its 
Convocation, and bind it hand and foot, that it could 
no longer speak. This being true, how could it be 
said for one moment, in honesty, that the Church had 
anything to do with its own reformation % Here I 
prefer to give you the testimony of the Protestant 
historians themselves, that you may see that no word 
of mine is exaggerated or partial. I quote first from 
Burnet, who writes a history of the Church of Eng- 
land, and himself was a bishop of that Church. 

Two years before the abrogation by Parliament of 



8 

the Papal supremacy * the Convocation had been 
bound to make no canons without the king's assent. 
And in 1532 this council was forced to the following 
submission : "That they would not enact, promulge, 
or put in execution any constitution to be made by 
them without the royal license ; such was the trust 
they put in the king's wisdom, goodness, and zeal, 
and in his incomparable learning, far exceeding the 
learning of all other princes they had read of." 
' ' They also offered to moderate or annnl the consti- 
tutions already passed, according to his judgment." 

" By this," says Burnet, "all the opposition that 
the convocations would probably have given to every 
step that was afterwards made in the Reformation 
was so entirely restrained that the quiet progress of 
that work was owing to the restraints under which 
the clergy put themselves by their submission ; and 
in this the whole body of the Reformed Church has 
cheerfully acquiesced, till within these few years, 
that great endeavors have been made to blacken and 
disgrace it." 

Edward VI. came to the throne in 1547. The au- 
thority of the crown was freely used to accomplish 
their ends, Cranmer and his partisans acting simply 
by royal commission. The "Popish party," says 
Burnet, II. 74, " was yet so prevalent in both houses 
* Burnet, Appleton's Ed., III. 117-20 ; IV. 434. 



of Convocation that Cranmer had no hopes of doing 
anything until they were freed of the trouble which 
some of the great bishops gave them." An attempt 
was made to frame a new liturgy. But so fixed were 
the principles of faith that little could be done. The 
committee appointed by the crown to examine the 
services began by proposing questions on the Holy 
Eucharist, and ended by opposing the most cherish- 
ed views of the Reformers. Nevertheless, the new 
prayer-book drawn up by Cranmer was set forth by 
royal authority, and in Parliament, 1549, an act was 
passed confirming its use. By the same act heavy 
penalties were passed against such as should refuse 
to use it. This act excited great opposition and gave 
great pain to the nation, for as we are told by Dr. 
Short (sec. 313), an English Protestant bishop, "no 
opinion was entertained with so much earnestness on 
the part of the people as that of Transubstantiation. 
Its friends regarded the suppression of it as the 
destruction of their chief spiritual hope." But 
things were to go on as it pleased the king and his 
council. "The power of granting licenses to preach 
was taken away from the bishops of each diocese, so 
that none might give them but the king and the 
archbishop of Canterbury," and at one time all 
preaching was forbidden (Burnet, II. 128). 

Cranmer then set to preparing articles of religion, 



10 

and framed forty-two, which in 1553 were published 
under the royal authority. These articles had no 
sanction from the ecclesiastical body, though by 
their original title it might so appear. Says Bishop 
Short (sec. 484) : "From the title under which these 
articles were originally published, it might be sup- 
posed that they derived their authority from the 
sanction of Convocation ; but if they were ever sub- 
mitted to the upper house, which is very question- 
able, it is indubitable that they were never brought 
before the lower, while all the original mandates 
which remain prove that they were promulgated by 
the royal proclamation alone." The plan of refor- 
mation which was pursued by Cranmer in this reign 
was, in the words of the same writer (Short, sec. 338), 
"to entrust the task of reforming any particular 
branch of church matters to a committee of divines 
appointed by the crown, sometimes on the ground of 
the ecclesiastical supremacy, and sometimes under 
an act of Parliament, and then to sanction the result 
by a fresh bill, or by publishing it under the royal 
authority." " This method of proceeding may be 
esteemed very unconstitutional with regard to the 
Convocation, but if the supreme authority be lodged 
in the civil magistrate, in him, too, must be vested the 
power of finally approving or rejecting all regula- 
tions with regard to the service of the Church." 



11 

Thus we behold the practical result of Henry' s su- 
premacy in the destruction of all ecclesiastical legis- 
lation. Nor was it only a matter of fact ; it became 
a matter of doctrine ; and while the clergy were 
bound to subscribe to it, its effects ran deeper than 
the surface of things, and vitiated what was left of 
the faith. The opinions of Archbishop Cranmer be- 
came Erastian. In 1540 he replied to certain ques- 
tions proposed to him, and seemed to look upon the 
whole clerical office as dependent entirely upon the 
civil magistrate, saying that the prince or the peo- 
ple might make a priest for themselves, for whom no 
consecration was necessary, and that "the power of 
excommunication depends entirely on the civil au- 
thority committed to a bishop." " A trace of these 
sentiments," says Bishop Short, "may be found in 
those of the Thirty- nine Articles which relate to the 
church, among which Articles XIX., XXI., and 
XXIII. might be subscribed by any one who held 
opinions purely Erastian." 

When Queen Mary came to the throne in 1553 the 
freedom of convocation was restored, but even in the 
new Church founded by Elizabeth, with bishops of 
her own making, it was again taken away. 

And not only was all the pretended Reformation 
accomplished by the secular power, but the Church, 
so far as it could speak, protested. Every action 



12 

of the Convocation condemned the reformed doc- 
trines. 

The last acts by which Elizabeth completed the 
work and established her new Church were accom- 
plished not by Convocation bnt by a Parliament 
specially elected for the purpose through the influ- 
ence of the crown, the final vote passing the House 
of Lords by a meagre majority of three. 

Burnet, the Protestant historian, admits that "all 
endeavors were too weak to overcome the aversion of 
the people toward the Reformation," and even inti- 
mates that "German troops were sent for from Calais 
on account of the bigotry with which the bulk of 
the people adhered to the old superstition" (Burnet, 
III. 170-6). 

II. 

The English Reformation began in crime and ended 
in violence. 

1. That crime was the beginning of the movement of 
Henry VIII. hardly needs a demonstration. His ca- 
reer for wickedness is unexampled in history. 

The only motive for his action was the determina- 
tion he had made to gratify his passions at all costs, 
and to obtain a. divorce from Queen Catherine, his 
lawful wife. 

The Holy See could not consent to this violation of 
the divine law, and so the Protestant Reformation be- 



13 

gan. Once the open opponent of Luther and the 
defender of the faith, he became the strongest enemy 
of the Church. Unbridled and open lust was the 
cause of all his actions on this religious question. 

The adulterous murderer unfortunately found tools 
at his hand among the ministers, and even among the 
bishops, who surrounded him. His principal tool in 
things ecclesiastical deserves a brief notice, as he is 
not only marked by his own crimes but identified 
with those of his master. 

Thomas Cranmer was born in 1489. While a fellow 
at Jesus College, Cambridge, he fell in love with a 
barmaid at the Dolphin Hotel and married her. For 
this marriage he was obliged to quit his college, but 
on the death of his wife a year afterward he returned 
to his fellowship. He graduated in theology in 1526. 
He became a favorite of Henry VIII. by his advocacy 
of the divorce of Queen" Catherine. It was Cranmer 
who proposed to the king to disregard the Pope, and 
apply to the Catholic universities. "By St. Mary," 
said Henry, "I have at last caught the right sow by 
the ear." And we may add that he held on to the 
ear to his death. Cranmer was sent on a mission to 
Rome, and on his return he fell in love with Osian- 
der's niece at Nuremberg, and secretly married her, 
notwithstanding his vows, and even the commands of 
the king, who never would allow priests to marry. 



14 

He was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533. At 
his consecration he swore allegiance to the Roman 
See, which he [never intended to render. He conti- 
nued to pander to all the vices of the king, and by his 
servile obsequiousness saved his life, which was more 
than once in danger. 

He was accused by the canons of Canterbury of 
heresy and transgression of the laws of the Church 
and the realm, but he sent his wife out of the coun- 
try and saved himself by downright prevarication and 
falsehood. But we leave the words of Macaulay to 
speak further of this shameless ecclesiastic : 

" The shameful origin of Cranmer's history, com- 
mon enough in the scandalous chronicles of courts, 
seems strangely out of place in a hagiology. Cran- 
mer rose into favor by serving Henry in a disgrace- 
ful affair of his first divorce. He promoted the mar- 
riage of Anne Boleyn with the king. On a frivolous 
pretence he pronounced it null and void. On a pre- 
tence, if possible, still more frivolous he dissolved 
the ties which bound the shameless tyrant to Anne 
of Cleves. He attached himself to Cromwell while 
the fortunes of Cromwell flourished. He voted for 
cutting off his head without a trial when the tide of 
royal favor turned. He conformed backwards and 
forwards as the king changed his mind. While 
Henry lived he assisted in condemning to the flames 



15 

those who denied the doctrine of transubstantiation. 
When Henry died he found out that the doctrine 
was false. He was, however, not at a loss for people 
to burn. The authority of his station and of his 
gray hairs was employed to overcome the disgust 
with which an intelligent and virtuous child regard- 
ed persecution. Intolerance is always bad, but the 
sanguinary intolerance of a man who thus wavered 
in his creed excites a loathing to which it is difficult 
to give vent without calling foul names. Equally 
false to political and to religious~obligations, he was 
first the tool of Somerset and then the tool of North- 
umberland. When the former wished to put his 
own brother to death] without even the form of a 
trial, he found a ready instrument in Cranmer. In 
spite of the canon law, which forbade a churchman 
to take any part in matters of blood, the archbishop 
signed the warrant for the atrocious sentence. When 
Somerset had been in his turn destroyed, his de- 
stroyer received the support of Cranmer in his at- 
tempt to change the course of the succession. 

"But his martyrdom, it is said, redeemed every- 
thing. It is extraordinary that so much ignorance 
should exist on this subject. The fact is, that if a 
martyr be a man who chooses to die rather than to 
renounce his opinions, Cranmer was no more a 
martyr than Dr. Dodd. He died solely because he 



1G 

could not help it. He never retracted his recantation 
till he found he had made it in vain. The queen 
was fully resolved that, Catholic or Protestant, he 
should burn. Then he spoke [out, as people gen- 
erally speak out when they are at the point of 
death and have nothing to hope or to fear on earth. 
If Mary had suffered him to live, we suspect that he 
would have heard Mass and received absolution 
like a good Catholic, till the accession of Elizabeth, 
and that he would then have purchased, by another 
apostasy, the power of burning men better and brav- 
er than himself."* 

As regards the morals of the people with these 
examples before them, we give a brief quotation 
from Lingard: 

"Nor were the national morals improved, if we 
may judge from the portraits drawn by the most 
eminent of the reformed preachers. They assert 
that the sufferings of the indigent were viewed 
with indifference by the hard-heartedness of the 
rich ; that in the pursuit of gain the most bare- 
faced frauds were avowed and justified ; that rob- 
bers and murderers escaped punishment by the 
partiality of juries; that church livings were 
given to laymen, or converted to the use of the 
patrons ; that marriages were repeatedly dis- 

* Macaulav's " Review of Hallam." 



r: 

solved by private authority ; and that the haunts 
of rjrostitution were multiplied beyond measure. 
How far credit should be given to such repre- 
sentations may perhaps be doubtful. Declama- 
tions from the pulpit are not the best historical 
evidence. Much in them must be attributed to 
the exaggeration of zeal, much to the affectation 
of eloquence. Still, when these deductions have 
been made, when the invectives of Knox and Lever, 
of Gilpin and Latimer have been reduced by the 
standard of reason and experience, enough will 
remain to justify the conclusion that the change 
of religious polity, by removing many of the for- 
mer restraints upon vice and enervating the au- 
thority of the spiritual courts, had given a bolder 
front to licentiousness and opened a wider scope 
to the indulgence of criminal passion."* 

Passing from the subject of morality, we will 
dwell for a moment upon the plunder of the pro- 
perty belonging to the Church and dedicated by 
pious legacies to the service of God. 

The confiscation of ecclesiastical property began in 
1535. A commission was appointed by Cromwell 
to make a general visitation of the religious houses 
of the kingdom, with a view, as Mr. Hume candidly 
admits, of discovering such irregularities as might 
*Lingard, Vol. VII. p. 108. 



18 

furnish a pretext for their suppression. Parliament, 
acting upon the report of the commissioners, passed 
a bill to suppress all religious houses whose income 
was less than two hundred pounds a year, and to 
seize their revenues for the crown. One hundred 
and seventy-six houses were thus suppressed and 
plundered. 

The larger monasteries soon after shared the same 
fate. So great was the indignation of the people at 
the wholesale robbery of sacred property, that the 
masses in the northern counties rose in rebellion, 
took possession of the suppressed convents, and 
restored them to their owners. But this "pilgrim- 
age of grace," as it was called, only helped the 
agents of the crown ; as the communities of the larger 
establishments were charged with complicity in the 
insurrection, and their property was also confis- 
cated. 

Where bribes and fair promises would not succeed 
in the southern counties, threats and violence were 
employed. "By the year 1540 the royal will had 
been carried out with shocking vandalism ; works 
that had cost years of patient and skilful labor the 
triumphs of art and the monuments of science, all 
were destroyed. Nor did the hatred of the ancient 
faith stop here. The tombs of St. Augustine, the 
apostle of the Anglo-Saxons, and St. Thomas a 



10 

Becket |were despoiled, and the ashes they con- 
tained flung to the winds. Even the tomb of King 
Alfred, the founder of England's greatness, did not 
escape the hands of the ravager. From the revenues 
of the confiscated monastic establishments, Henry- 
founded and scantily endowed six bishoprics and 
fourteen cathedral and collegiate churches ; but the 
bulk of the sacrilegious plunder went to indemnify 
the royal visitors and the parasites of the court." * 

Of the crimes which made infamous the first 
steps of the English Reformation, Lord Macaulay 
uses these words : 

"Here zeal was the tool of worldliuess. A king 
whose character may best be described by saying that 
he was despotism personified, unprincipled minis- 
ters, a rapacious aristocracy, a servile Parliament — 
such were the instruments by which England was 
delivered from the yoke of Rome. The work which 
had been begun by Henry, the murderer of his 
wives, was continued by Somerset, the murderer of 
his brother, and completed by Elizabeth, the mur- 
derer of her guest. Sprung from brutal passion, 
nurtured by selfish policy, the Reformation in Eng- 
land displayed little of what had in other countries 
distinguished it."f 

The following is the testimony of one of the 
* Alzog, III. 197. f Miscellan., p. 71. 



20 

English bishops in reference to the plunder of 
ecclesiastical property : 

" The ravage which was committed by Henry 
was the wasteful prodigality of a tyrant. Under 
Edward the monarch was too weak to resist the 
avarice of those who governed, and Mary rather 
enriched than robbed the Establishment ; but Eliza- 
beth laid her hands on all that she could grasp ; 
though, for the sake of keeping up appearances, 
she restored some small portion in foundations 
connected with education. The poverty of the 
Church in the early part of the reign of Eliza- 
beth was excessive, not only among the higher 
clergy, who were exposed to these attacks from 
the court, but among the lower and laborious in- 
dividuals who possess no dignified station, and 
have no further worldly prospect than to provide 
bread for themselves and their families." * 

2. The end of a movement so infamous by un- 
paralleled crimes was a violence of persecution 
before unknown. 

It was reserved for Protestant England to inaugu- 
rate a system of extermination which we have never 
known before nor since. We shall briefly touch upon 
some features of this persecution, for in our day it is 
little known or often forgotten. When Henry began 

*Short's "Hist, of the Church of England," pp. 137, 138. 



21 

liis race of crime and rebellion the nation was alto- 
gether opposed to his movements. The great mass 
always continued Catholic, even to the day of Eliza- 
beth ; and when she set up her Church and organ- 
ized her hierarchy it was necessary to force respect 
and oblige conformity. The bull which Pope Pius Y. 
had fulminated against her waked up all her malice, 
and for a while she sought its revocation. " Why," 
said the Pontiff, " if you deem the sentence valid, do 
you not seek a reconciliation with the Holy See ? If 
you deem it invalid, why do you wish it to be re- 
voked?" * But acts were now employed in Parlia- 
ment to make a due retaliation. The penalties of 
treason were enacted against all who should write or 
speak against Elizabeth's succession, against all who 
should receive or use any writing or instrument from 
the Bishop of Home, without which the Catholic 
Church could not subsist. Persons were also forbid- 
den under the fear of prcemunire to introduce or re- 
ceive the crosses or pictures or Agnus Dei blessed by 
Papal authority, while all over a certain age were 
bound to attend the established service. Any Catho- 
lics who for fear or the enjoyment of religion had fled 
to other countries were bidden to return under the 
penalty of forfeiture of all their goods to the use of 
the queen. These acts were a two-edged sword from 

* Lingard, VITI. ch. 2. 



22 

which the Catholics suffered severely, but not alone. 
Delegates were appointed by the crown with full 
powers to enforce the rigorous law. An open schism 
was the result, for in spite of the act, the Puritans 
abandoned the churches and suffered willingly for 
the offence. The Catholics, however, had a double 
portion. For them there was no possible peace. 
Many sought beyond the seas an asylum, and by so 
doing lost all their lands and titles. Others re- 
mained, and satisfied their consciences on the ground 
that attending Protestant worship was but an act of 
civil obedience ; while the greater number refused to 
obey the law, and passed their lives in fear and 
alarm, hunted from place to place, or boldly confess- 
ing the faith under imprisonment and death. The 
priests that remained were forced to concealment, 
and performed their functions and administered the 
sacraments in private houses. But death daily 
thinned their number, and it was confidently expect- 
ed that the Catholic priesthood, and with it the Ca- 
tholic worship, wonld become extinct. In the first 
year of Elizabeth more bishops and priests were de- 
prived and punished than in all the preceding reigns. 
Every kind of suspicion was made to act against the 
remnant of the faithful. Some of the powers of 
Europe attempted to interfere, but this only accele- 
rated the speed of persecution. 



"The Catholics," says Dr. Lingard,* "were at 
this time doomed to suffer additional severities, al- 
though hardly a month had been allowed to pass, in 
which the scaffold had not streamed with their 
blood. A statute was now enacted providing that if 
any clergyman born in the queen's dominions, and 
ordained by the authority of the Bishop of Rome, 
were found within the realm after the expiration of 
forty days, he should be adjudged guilty of high 
treason ; that all persons aiding or abetting him 
should be liable to the penalties of felony ; that 
whosoever knew of his being in the kingdom and 
did not discover him within twelve days should be 
fined and imprisoned at the queen' s pleasure ; that 
all students in the Catholic seminaries who did not 
return within six months after proclamation to that 
effect should be punished as traitors ;- that persons 
supplying them with money should incur a praemu- 
nire; that parents sending their children abroad 
without license should forfeit for every such offence 
one hundred pounds ; and that children so sent to 
seminaries should be disabled from inheriting the 
property of their parents." 

These were new measures to extinguish the priest- 
hood. During the lapse of fourteen years it is posi- 
tively known that sixty- one clergymen, forty- seven 
tL * Dr. Lingard, VIII. ch. 3. 



24 

laymen, and two gentlewomen had suffered capital 
punishment for some of these spiritual offences, But 
the penalties of recusancy were so great that by it all 
the property of Catholics was confiscated to the 
crown. There was a fine for every act of disobedi- 
ence. The crime of hearing even one Mass was pun- 
ished by a year' s imprisonment and the forfeiture of 
one hundred marks. When they were confined in 
prison it was at their own charge. Every attempt to 
educate or instruct in the true religion was visited by 
the severest penalties. Some were publicly whipped, 
and in default of money had their ears bored with a 
hot iron. And many of these persons had bound 
themselves to oaths of loyalty which fully satisfied 
the council. These things are a poor analysis of 
the persecution under Elizabeth, whose object was 
not merely the suppression but the extinction of the 
old faith. 

We pass on now to notice the penal code of James 
I., which embraces the [full spirit of the preceding 
reign, and which laid the foundation of many years 
of suffering. We shall see how the persecution ex- 
tended even to ordinary life and to the deprivation of 
all civil privileges. 

(May 27, 1606.) 1. Catholics were forbidden under 
particular penalties to appear at court, to dwell with- 
in the boundaries of the city of London, or to re- 



25 

move on any occasion more than live miles from their 
homes without a special license under the signatures 
of four neighboring magistrates. 2. They were made 
incapable of practising in surgery or physic, or in the 
common or civil law ; of acting as judges, clerks, or 
officers in any court or corporation ; of presenting to 
Kvings, schools, or hospitals in their gift ; or of per- 
forming the offices of administrators, executors, or 
guardians. 3. Husbands and wives, unless they had 
been married by a Protestant minister, were made to 
forfeit every benefit to which, he or she might be en- 
titled from the property of the other. Unless their 
children were baptized by a Protestant minister within 
a month after birth, each omission subjected them to 
a line of one hundred pounds. And if after death 
they were not buried in a Protestant cemetery, their 
executors were liable to pay for each corpse the sum 
of twenty pounds. 4. Every child sent for educa- 
tion beyond the seas was from that moment debarred 
from any devise, descent, or gift, until he should re- 
turn and conform to the Established Church ; all such 
benefits being assigned by law to the Protestant next 
of kin. 5. Every recusant was placed in the state 
of excommunication ; his house might be searched, 
his books and furniture having any relation to his 
worship might be burned, and his horses and arms 
taken from him by the magistrate.. 6. All who ab~ 



26 

sented themselves from the Established Church were 
bound at the king' s option to pay a fine for every 
month, or to give up all their personal and two-thirds 
of their real estate. Every one who harbored a Catho- 
lic visitor or servant in his house was fined ten pounds 
every lunar month. Lastly, a new oath of allegiance 
was devised, by which it resulted that all who be- 
lieved in the temporal power of the Supreme Pontiff 
were subject to perpetual imprisonment. ~No wonder 
that this code excited the dismay and abhorrence 
of the world. ~No wonder that the French minis- 
ter exclaimed that these things were more worthy 
of barbarians than of civilized men. Such, however, 
was, and such has been, the penal law in England. It 
is only recently that we have seen the end of it, and 
even now the end is not come. Succeeding reigns 
altered or revised the provisions of this code, which 
fell by its very severity, and could not long be put in 
active operation. 

" The rack," says Hallam, "seldom stood idle in 
the Tower for all the latter part of Elizabeth's reign. 
To those who remember the annals of their country, 
that dark and gloomy pile affords associations not 
quite so numerous and recent as the Bastile once did, 
yet enough to excite our hatred and horror. . . . 
Such excessive severities, under the pretext of trea- 
son, but sustained by very little evidence of any 



27 

other offence than the exercise of the Catholic mi- 
nistry, excited indignation throughout a great part 
of Europe."* 

III. 

The English Reformation was, like the movement 
on the Continent, which we have considered, the de- 
struction of any positive creed and of all unity of 
faith. 

1. TJieoretically. 

The idea of the Church reforming itself in faith (as 
we have seen) destroys the very idea of a teaching 
body, or any authority to teach. 

Then without a teacher unity in belief is im- 
possible, and can hardly be conceived of, as every 
man is his own teacher. 

Secondly, the fact of the civil power destroying 
the creed of a Church, or altering it, demonstrates 
the impossibility of unity. 

No promise of infallibility has ever been given by 
God to a king, and the very assertion of the supre- 
macy of the crown is destructive of the foundations 
of the Church. 

Henry VIII. asserted his independence of the 
Vicar of Christ, and made himself the head of the 
Church. Then he affirmed most of the doctrines of 

* Hallam," Const, Hist.," p. 93. 



23 

the Catholic faith, and sought to enforce them under 
pain of death. 

In 1536 he published articles of faith, by the en- 
forcing of which both Catholics and Protestants 
were brought to the stake. Protestants were un- 
willing to confess doctrines they had renounced, 
and Catholics could not receive his ecclesiastical 
supremacy. 

2. Practically there is no creed in the English 
Church, and no unity of faith. 

The retention of the creeds is nothing, as these 
creeds are interpreted according to the mind of the 
receiver, or quietly let alone. There are multitudes 
in the English Church who do not know the proper 
doctrine of the incarnation of our Lord. There are 
none who can really believe in one holy Catholic 
Church, or in the communion of saints. 

The only dogmatic standards are the articles of 
religion. These articles are Calvinistic, Lutheran, 
and Erastian at once. 

They deny the infallibility of the Church in whole 
or in part, which very expression is a contradic- 
tion in terms. They assert the sufficiency of Holy 
Scripture as a rule of faith, to be interpreted by 
private judgment. Under the same canopy we have 
all the shades of Protestantism. We have Low 
Church and no church, Broad Church, and High 



29 

Church, and Ritualism. No existing sect can boast 
of such variety. There are some who refuse to 
accept the Articles, and there are others who will not 
receive the offices of the Prayer-Book. No living 
man can tell what is the actual creed of the Church 
of England. 

We quote from what the " Anglo-Catholics " call the 
very acceptable authority of Dr. Dollinger : " As to 
what the English Church possessed of positive eccle- 
siastical tenets, it has gradually allowed them to be- 
come obsolete. It is content with taking up just so 
much space in life as commerce, the enjoyment of 
riches, and the habitude of a class desirous before all 
things of comfort may have left to it. Of the nume- 
rous pious practices by which formerly the lives of 
Englishmen were attached to the Christian faith, 
there are few that the Church has not broken, or 
allowed to be broken, and the few that remain are 
those which possess the smallest restraining power. 
The confession of sins, fasting, everything that falls 
within the limits of the ascetic, the average English- 
man reckons as superstition. His Church, and it is 
that for which he especially admires it, requires of 
him nothing "superstitious." Its insulated charac- 
ter also, its separation from every other Christian 
community, suits the national taste, and is a popular 
feature of the Anglican Church. . . . The An- 



30 

glican clergyman is a gentleman who lias no mis- 
sion from God, and no fixed doctrine to proclaim, 
for the Church he serves has none. What he 
teaches is only the opinion of the party or school 
to which he belongs, by the accidents of birth, edu- 
cation, or society."* 

"This Church," as the excellent Alexander Knox 
has complained, " is wanting in all settled dogmatic 
principles. A theological system presupposes a 
knowledge of what the Church really teaches ; but 
in England no one knows that, or can know it, not 
even the Prime Minister and his Privy Council. If, 
for example, a hand-book of Anglican 'theology had 
been issued before the decision of the Gorham con- 
troversy, it must have been after that decision en- 
tirely remodelled, since the principle thereby dis- 
avowed, and the one thereby established, govern 
the entire organism of doctrine ; for the question 
that was answered in the negative by the celebrated 
decision of the Privy Council was whether the dogma 
of the sacramental effect of Baptism was a doctrine 
of the Anglican Church. The view of the Evan- 
gelicals, according to which Baptism is a mere rite 
of consecration, has hereby obtained its franchise in 
the Anglican Church ; and that is, even according 
to Lutheran theology, a heresy which alone would 

* Dr. Bollinger's " Church and the Churches," pp. 143, 147. 



31 

make every union with the Lutherans and Calvinists 
for ever impossible. It may be said of the English 
Church that it is like an Indian idol, with many 
heads and very few hands, and every head with differ- 
ent views." . . . " If the whole of the Episc opal 
constitution were done away with," says Hallam, 
"it would make no perceptible difference in the re- 
ligion of the people." " The true Church," says 
Carlyle, "consists now of the publishers of these 
political newspapers, which preach to the people 
daily and weekly, with an authority formerly only 
possessed by the Reformers or popes." 

"The Church of England declares pure doctrine, 
the right use of the sacraments, and the maintenance 
of discipline to be the three signs of a true Church. 
The Church itself, however, has no fixed doctrine ; 
its formulas contradict each other, and what one 
part of its servants teach is rejected by .the other as 
a soul-destroying error. It is also dumb, and in- 
capable of making known, in any form, its true 
sentiments, even when it has them. 

"Concerning the proper administration of the 
sacraments, there exist within its bosom the same 
contradictions as with respect to doctrine ; and as 
to discipline it has lost even the semblance of 
unity."* 

* Dr. Dollinger's " Church and the Churches," pp. 171, 172. 



"It ought to be considered, 7 ' says the London 
Times, of August, 1852, " that this Church, to which 
the Parliament had given its present form, possesses 
every attribute, every advantage, and every dis- 
advantage of a compromise. Her articles and au- 
thorized formularies are so drawn as to admit with- 
in her pale persons differing as widely as it is pos- 
sible for the professors of the Christian religion to 
differ from each other. Unity was neither sought 
mr obtained, but comprehension was aimed at and 
accomplished. Therefore we have in the Church 
of England persons differing not merely in their 
particular tenets but on the rule and ground of 
their belief." 

The Protestant Episcopal Church is still more dis- 
united, because there is no state to hold it together. 

It has made advances in the path of Protestant 
Reformation. 

It has omitted the Athanasian Creed, because it 
was too decided for its faith. 

It has reaffirmed the articles, with all their obnoxi- 
ous Calvinistic and Lutheran opinions. 

It has omitted the only form of absolution which 
could be a valid form for a true priest having 
jurisdiction. 

It has denied any real presence of our Lord in 
the Eucharist. This was emphatically done in the 



General Convention of 1868, where the bishops 
" condemn any doctrine of the Holy Eucharist which 
implies that after consecration the proper nature of 
bread and wine does not remain, or which local- 
izes in them the bodily presence of our Lord." 

October 11, 1871, the bishops in council declared 
" that the word regenerate used in the office for 
Baptism does not signify any moral change wrought 
in the sacrament." 

At the same convention the bishops condemned 
the practice of "private confession as an engine 
of opxjression and a source of corruption," asserting 
that " pardon is granted to any child of God on 
his repentance." 

The Episcopal Church admits to its communion 
anybody and everybody, without conditions — all 
kinds of Protestants, even sometimes those who 
do not believe in the Trinity. 

It marries anybody, even people unbaptized, 
without asking of them any profession of faith. 

It buries, in "the hope of a glorious resurrec- 
tion," any one, except, perhaps, the suicide, and 
asks no questions as to faith or practice. 



34 

IV. 

The result was the establishment of a state Church, 
depending upon the civil power, without orders or 
jurisdiction. 

I. As for the civil character of the Reformed 
Church of England, we need only cite the fact that 
the Church owes its existence to the state, and that 
the crown is its complete master. 

It began by the claim of royal supremacy in 
things spiritual. By this claim the authority of 
the Vicar of Christ was rejected, and the whole 
ecclesiastical character of the church destroyed. 

This claim made the king the fountain of all spi- 
ritual power, and the bishops were declared to 
derive their authority from him. 

We quote from the English Bishop Short (His- 
tory, sec. 201) : " Henry VIII. now suspended all the 
bishops from the use of their episcopal authority 
during the visitation which he purposed to insti- 
tute ; and after a time the power of exercising it 
was restored by a commission, to the following ef- 
fect, which was granted to each of them on their 
petitioning for it: ' Since all authority, civil and 
ecclesiastical, flows from the crown, and since Crom- 
well (our lay vicar-general), to whom the eccle- 
siastical part has been committed, is so occupied 



that he cannot fully exercise it, we commit to you 
the license of ordaining, proving wills, and using 
other ecclesiastical jurisdiction, besides those things 
which are committed to you by God in Holy Scripture ; 
and we allow you to hold this authority during our 
pleasure, as you must answer to God and to us.' 
It must be confessed that this commission seems 
rather to outstep the limits of that authority which 
God has committed to the civil magistrate." 

The opinions of Cranmer were in accordance with 
his Lutheran sentiments, and his character as the 
unscrupulous minister of Henry VIII. 

"He held that Confirmation, Orders, and Extreme 
Unction were not sacraments, that Christian princes 
have the whole care of their subjects, as well in 
things spiritual as temporal, and that ministers of 
God's word are only officers appointed by them. 
Ceremonies used in the admission of ministers are 
not of necessity, but only for good order. There 
is no more promise of God's grace in committing 
of the ecclesiastical office than of the civil office. 
The apostles appointed ministers only because there 
were then no Christian princes. Princes may make 
priests as well as bishops, and so may the people by 
their election. ISTo consecration is needed, for election 
or appointing is sufficient" (Canon Estcourt, p. 21). 

The unchristian oath of supremacy, re-enacted 



3G 

in the time of Elizabeth, the actual founder of the 
English Church, reads thus : 

"I, A B, do utterly testify and declare in my 
conscience that the queen's highness is the only 
supreme governor of the realm, and of all other 
her highness' dominions and countries, as well in 
all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes as 
temporal ; and that no foreign prince, person, pre- 
late, state, or potentate hath, or ought to have, 
any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, 
or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this 
realm; and therefore I do utterly renounce and 
forsake all foreign jurisdictions, powers, superiori- 
ties, and authorities." 

"The clergy of the Church of England," says 
Blackstone, "derive all their title from the civil 
magistrate. They look up to the king as their 7iead, 
to the Parliament as their law-giver, and pride 
themselves in nothing more justly than in being 
true members of the church emphatically by law 
established" (Comm. IV. 104). 

The present sovereign of England, like all her 
predecessors since Elizabeth, swore to "maintain 
the Protestant reformed religion, established by 
law." 

On St. John Baptist's day, 1559, by royal edict, 
the public celebration of Mass ceased throughout 



37 

the whole realm. But as the bishops, with one 
excejjtion, refused to assent to this iniquity, and to 
say that in their consciences they "believed that 
the queen alone was the supreme governor of the 
Church under Christ, they were soon after deprived 
of their dignities, and committed either to prison 
or to the custody of divers persons" (Sanders, book 
IV. ch. 3). 

" Elizabeth," says Macaulay ("Review of Hallam "), 
" clearly discerned the advantages which were to be 
derived from a close connection between the mo- 
narchy and the priesthood. At the time of her 
accession, indeed, she evidently meditated a partial 
reconciliation with Rome, and throughout her life 
she leaned strongly to some of the most obnoxious 
parts of the Catholic system. But her imperious 
temper, her keen sagacity, and her peculiar situa- 
tion soon led her to attach herself completely to a 
Church which was all her own" 

Such is the condition of the English Church, as 
it has been since its foundation, and as we see it 
now. The state speaks for it, either by Parliament, 
or court, or Privy Council, It cannot speak for 
itself. 

Convocation has neither liberty nor authority, 
and its assembling since the day of Elizabeth has 
been a mere matter of form. 



As for Pan-Anglican synods, they are mere vo- 
luntary assemblies of respectable gentlemen, as ad- 
mitted by their own friends, and Lave no pretension 
to any doctrinal authority. 

II. A Church cut olf from the communion of the 
Catholic body and its head, the Vicar of Christ, can 
have no j ur is diet Ion, for there can be but one Church, 
as there is one Lord. 

There may be the apostolic succession of bishops 
separate from the Catholic Church, but such bishops, 
with valid orders, can have no jurisdiction, and all 
their acts are sacrilegious. 

Such is the case with the schismatical and hereti- 
cal churches of the East. 

The English Church, however, established by law, 
has no valid orders, having lost both the faith and 
the hierarchy of the ancient Church. 

This is the consequence of her reformation. 

As this point is of some importance to the eccle- 
siastical enquirers of the day, it has been very often 
made plain. "None are so blind as those who will 
not see." May God open the eyes of the blind. 

The rules of Catholic ordination must govern the 
inquiry, and not modern opinions. This is evident, 
since it is of Catholic orders that we speak. The 
points which we make, following Catholic theolo- 
gians and the practice of the Church, are : 



30 

First. These orders are rejected by the Church, 
and by every body which has an unquestioned apos- 
tolic succession. 

Is there any other tribunal % 

Second. The English ordinations depend upon that 
of Archbishop Parker, and there is no evidence that 
he was validly consecrated, because, admitting that 
he was consecrated at all, 

(a) there is no proof of the consecration of 
Barlow, his consecrator ; 

(b) the form used is so defective that from 
this cause alone the orders would be null. 



1. 



There is no question of the decision of the Catholic 
Church on the subject of the English orders. They 
have been pronounced invalid from the very begin- 
ning and to this day. 

All Anglican ministers passing to the priesthood 
have been absolutely reordained. 

Dr. Nicholas Sanders, a contemporary of Elizabeth, 
thus writes: "Now, when these superintendents 
were to be made, the affair became ridiculous ; they 
could find no Catholic bishops to lay hands upon 
them, and in their sect there were neither three nor 
two bishops, nor was there any metropolitan what- 



40 

soever. Tliey did not betake themselves to their 
neighbors, the Lutherans or Calvinists, for the pur- 
pose of obtaining the services of a bishop, for per- 
haps there were none among them. They impor- 
tuned an Irish archbishop, then a prisoner in Lon- 
don, and promised to set him at liberty and reward 
him for his services if he would preside at their ordi- 
nation. But the good man could not be persuaded 
to lay hallowed hands upon heretics or be a partaker 
in the sins of others. 

"Being thus utterly destitute of all laioful orders, 
and generally spoken of as men who were not bish- 
ops, they were compelled to have recourse to the 
civil power to obtain in the coming Parliament the 
confirmation of their rank from a lay authority, 
which should also pardon them, if anything had 
been done or left undone contrary to lav/ ; and this 
was done after they had been some years acting as 
bishops without any episcopal consecration. Hence 
their name of parliamentary bishops" (Sanders' 
"Anglican Schism," IV. 5). 

Le Courayer says : " It is evident that all the Eng- 
lish Catholics in Elizabeth's time refused to recog- 
nize Parker as a bishop, as well as those whom he 
consecrated. Sanders, Stapleton, Harding, and all 
those who have written on this subject furnish au- 
thentic proofs of this." 



41 

So all Catholic writers in that day of persecution 
speak of Elizabeth's bishops. 

"Consider," says Bristow (1574), "what Church 
that is whose ministers are but very laymen, unsent, 
uncalled, unconsecrated, and therefore executing 
their pretended office without benefit or spiritual 
comfort of any man ; holding, therefore, among us, 
when they repent and come again, no other place 
but that of laymen ; in no case admitted nor looking 
to minister in any office, unless they take our orders, 
which before they had not." 

Harding (1568), in his answer to Jewell, replies : 
"You were made, you say, by the consecration of 
the archbishop [Parker] and three other bishops. 
And how, I pray you, was your archbishop himself 
consecrated ? You have made the matter worse, for 
your metropolitan, who should give authority to all 
your consecrations, had himself no lawful consecra- 
tion." 

There is no need of multiplying testimonies. 

The Sacrament of Order cannot be reiterated with- 
out sacrilege, but the practice of the Catholic Church 
has been invariably to reordam English ministers 
absolutely, and never conditionally. 

There were many thus ordained. 

There is the decree of the Holy Office, April 17, 
1704, sanctioned by Pope Clement XI. 



48 

By tMs decree the orders of Dr. John Clement 
Gordon, the Anglican bishop of Galloway, were pro- 
nounced null, and he was promoted to the minor 
orders, having first received the Sacrament of Con- 
firmation. Through humility he did not ascend to 
the sacred orders. He received tonsure from the 
hands of the Pope himself, who gave him the name 
of the Abate Clemente. 

The Greek Church has in like manner acted with 
regard to the Anglican orders. 

We quote from a work by Dr. Overbeck, a priest 
of the Tvusso-Greek Church : 

"Rome's dealing with the Anglican clergy who 
went over to her is a true pattern of orthodox 
dealing. If Rome considers all ordinations by Par- 
ker and his successors to be invalid, null, and void, 
and consistently reordained all those converts who 
wished and were fit for orders, the Eastern Church 
can but imitate her proceedings, as both follow on 
this point the same principles. 

"As Parker's consecration was invalid, the apos- 
tolic line was broken off — immediately broken off." * 

The orthodox Greek Church has also anathema- 
tized the English Church and its doctrines, and has 
never allowed any of its members to receive Holy 
Communion at the hands of her priests. The Council 

* Dr. Overbeck's " Catholic Orthodoxy," pp. G7, 71. 



43 " 

of Bethlehem, 1672, has spoken as strongly as did 
the Council of Trent. 

!Nor did the Anglicans ever find any heretical sect 
with the true apostolic succession which would in 
any way acknowledge these orders or take part in 
them. 

Dr. Ewer, of this city, in a lecture remarkable for 
self-contradiction, tells us that in 1617 " one Mark A. 
De Dominis, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Spalatro, 
went to England and joined with the Archbishop of 
Canterbury in the consecration of ten bishops." He 
gives no references, and, in fact, gives none in the 
whole book ; but he is probably not aware that, ac- 
cording to Catholic theology, as we will see, the con- 
secration would be held invalid unless the conse- 
crator were a validly ordained bishop. Why did not 
the Archbishop of Canterbury yield to this apostate; 
his own place, and thus mend his orders? 

2. 

The ordination of Archbishop Parker was null. 

1. There is no evidence that William Barlow, his 
consecrator, was ever ordained. 

Admitting the fact of a ceremony of consecration, 
which seems most probable, it is certain that Barlow 
was the consecrator. 

This matter has been fully and candidly examined 



H 

by /many writers, and the summary of evidence is 
this : 

First. There is no record anywhere of his conse- 
cration. 

Second. "All the arguments used by Bramhall 
and Elrington, such as the praemunire, the grant of 
temporalities, and the seat in the House of Lords, are 
shown to be either groundless, or contrary to the 
facts." 

Tliird. "All the dates assigned for his consecra- 
tion — viz., the 22d of February by Godwin, the 23d 
of April by Dr. Lee, and the 11th of June by Mr. 
Haddan — are contradicted by the testimony of re- 
cords." 

Fourth. "The whole time left for him to be con- 
secrated in, is reduced to a period of seventeen days, 
between the 12th and 30th of June inclusive."'" 
During this time there is no evidence that he was 
consecrated, and the probabilities are against it. ' 

This is in entire accordance with his sentiments 
and those of Cranmer. 

Thus to the question "whether in the New Testa- 
ment any consecration of a bishop or priest be re- 
quired, or whether only appointing to the office be 
sufficient?" they both replied : "In the New Testa- 
ment, he that is appointed to be a bishop or priest 

* Canon Estcourt, " Anglican Orders," p. 79. 



45 

needeth no consecration, for election or appointing 
thereto is sufficient." We would not be astonished 
to find Barlow acting in accordance with his senti- 
ments. 

The unfortunate founder of the English succession 
was a religious who had broken his vow of chastity, 
having married, as Cranmer did, and at the time of 
his reported or supposed consecration having a 
family of five daughters and one son. 

The effect of these circumstances upon the English 
orders is very evident. 

The probable opinion, and the only one which can 
be followed in practice, is that the consecrator effects 
and completes the whole consecration. This is the 
doctrine of the Roman Pontifical, and the one ap- 
proved by theologians and the Church. Thus the 
"Summa A urea" of Henry de Segusia, Cardinal- 
Bishop of Ostia, says : "One perfects the whole con- 
secration, for if one does one part and another 
another part, nothing is done." 

A consecration by a single bishop is perfectly valid, 
according to the decision of the Holy See. 

"Although there are three who consecrate," says 
Filliucius (tract "De Sac. Ordine"), "one of them 
alone completes the consecration, even though the 
others pronounce the words, for of one sacrament 
there is one minister " 



46 

It is then certain that a consecration by an uncon- 
secrated bisliop would be held by s all theologians as 
invalid. 

2. The form by which Parker is said to have been 
consecrated was defective and insufficient. This has 
been formally decided by the decree of the Holy 
Office, which we have already quoted in the case of 
Bishop Gordon : " Even if one of the English bishops 
had received the episcopal ordination, which is by no 
means proved, these ordinations must be pronounced 
invalid througli the defect of matter, form, and due 
intention" 

We quote again from Dr. Overbeck : "The conse- 
cration of Matthew Parker was invalid because the 
forma sacramenti was insufficient. The form used 
might be used with just as much propriety in con- 
firmation, since we find not in it the slightest allusion 
to the Sacrament of Order. 

"The Anglicans themselves felt the want, and 
changed their form in 1662,"* and an act was passed 
to heal these defects. 

The act ex post facto, "VIII. Elizabeth, c. 1, sec. 4, 
is as follows : 

"All acts and things heretofore had, made, and 
done by any person or persons in or about any conse- 
cration, confirmation, or investing of any person or 

* Dr. Overbed?, pp. 68, 69. 



47 

l^ersons elected to the office or dignity of any arch- 
bishop or bishop within the realm or within any 
other of the queen's dominions, by virtue of the 
queen's letters patent or commission, since the be- 
ginning of her majesty's reign, be and shall be, by 
authority of this Parliament, declared, judged, and 
deemed, at and from every of the several times of 
the doings thereof, good and perfect to all respects 
and purposes, any matter or thing that can or may 
be objected to the contrary thereof in any wise not- 
withstanding." 

This act demonstrates that there was question of 
the validity of the English ordinations even among 
the authorities, while it is a singular attempt of a 
parliament to make good a thing already wrongly done. 

The simple argument in regard to the form used is 
this : 

The form was ambiguous, to say the least, and sig- 
nified no special gift or sacrament. Secondly, it had 
been made instead of the ancient rite to expressly 
deny the Catholic doctrine of orders and priesthood. 
It could not then be used by any one having the 
right intention, and as a form would be insufficient 
to fix such intention. If any such form were to be 
used by any Catholic bishop, his acts would certainly 
be condemned, and his ordination would be reiterated 
as insufficient, . _. > 



48 

The points of this argument are almost self-evident, 
and can hardly be contradicted. 

The simple words " take the Holy Ghost," accom- 
panied by the laying on of hands, neither express any 
special gift nor intention, and the notorious fact that 
the actors in Parker's consecration, as well as the 
framers of the Anglican rite, denied the sacramental 
character of orders, and the very nature of the priest- 
hood, almost prevents the possibility of their intend- 
ing to confer the priesthood or episcopate of the 
Catholic Church. 

Thus writes Franciscus a Sancta Clara : ' ' Since they 
have changed the Church forms de industria, as the 
second sort of Arians did, to declare that they do not 
what the Church intends, and in pursuit thereof have 
solemnly decreed against the power of sacrificing and 
consecrating in the sense of the old and present Ca- 
tholic Church, as appears in the 25th and 31st articles, 
it is evident that they never did or could validly 
ordain priests, and consequently bishops." 

Article XXV. of the Church of England denies the 
sacramental character of orders, and the most which 
it admits of the priesthood is that it is "a state of 
life allowed in the Scriptures." Article XXVIII. de- 
nies the real presence, and therefore the sacramental 
character of the Eucharist. Article XXXI. declares 
"the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was com- 



49 

monly said that the priest did offer Christ for the 
living and the dead to have remission of pain or 
guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous 
deceits." 

As the English Reformers denied the necessity of 
espiscopal ordination before the time of Parker, so 
afterwards did they admit the orders of the Protest- 
ant Churches on the Continent. 

Thus Whit aker replies to Durey : " Luther was a 
priest and doctor of your own, and could exercise 
that office in any of your churches. So, too, were 
Zwingli, Bucer, and others. And as presbyters, if 
presbyters are by divine right the same as bishops, 
they could set other presbyters over the churches. 
Therefore keep your orders to yourselves. God is 
not so tied to orders but that He can, without 
order, when the good of the church requires, consti- 
tute ministers in the churches. And the churches 
have the lawful power of choosing ministers, so that 
there is no need to take from you those who are to 
discharge the ministry among us."* 

And Hooker teaches that ' ' there may be sometimes 
very just reason to allow ordination without a 
bishop." 

On the views of Hooker, Warburton remarks: "The 
great Hooker was not only against, but laid down 

* Whitaker's " Defence," London, 1583, p. 820. 



50 

principles that have entirely subverted, all pretences 
to a divine, unalterable right in any form of church 
government whatever." 

"Blessed be God," says Bishop Hall,'" there is no 
difference in any ; essential matter between the Clmrc 
of England and her sisters of the Reformation." 

"I should be unwilling to affirm," says Arch- 
bishop Wake, "that where the ministry is not epis- 
copal there is no true Church, nor any true adminis- 
tration of the sacraments." 

Of the reformed bishops of England, their char- 
acter and position, much might be said. We pre- 
fer to quote the language of Froude, who certainly 
bears no good- will towards the Catholic Church : 

" A Catholic bishop holds his office by a tenure un- 
touched by the accidents of time. Dynasties may 
change, nations may lose their liberties, the firm 
fabrics of society itself may be swept away in the 
torrent of revolution ; the Catholic prelate remains at 
his post. When he dies another takes his place, and 
when the waters sink into their beds, the quiet figure 
is seen standing where it stood before, the person 
perhaps changed, the thing itself rooted like a rock 
on the adamantine basement of the world. The 
Anglican hierarchy, far unlike its rival, was a child 
of convulsion and compromise ; it drew its life from 
Elizabeth's throne, and had Elizabeth fallen it would 



51 

have crumbled into sand. The Church of England 
was as a limb lopped off from the Catholic trunk, it 
was cut away from the stream by which its vascular 
system had been fed, and the life of it as an indepen- 
dent and corporate existence was gone for ever. But 
it had been taken up and grafted in the state. If 
not what it had been, it could retain the form of 
what it had been. The image in its outward aspect 
could be made to correspond with the parent tree, 
and to sustain the illusion it was necessary to pro- 
vide bishops who could appear to have inherited 
their powers by the approved method as successors 
of the apostles."* 

' i Her bishops she treated with studied insolence as 
creatures of her own, whom she had made and could 
unmake at pleasure. The bishops themselves lived 
as if they knew their day to be a short one, and made 
the most of their opportunities while they lasted. 
Scandalous dilapidation, destruction of woods, waste 
of the property of the see by beneficial lease, the in- 
cumbent enriching himself and his family at the 
expense of his successors — this is the substantial his- 
tory of the Anglican hierarchy, with a few honorable 
exceptions, for the first twenty years of its existence. 
At the time when Walsingham was urging Elizabeth 
to an alliance with the Scotch Protestants, Matthew 

* Froude, " Hist, of England," VII., pp. 178, 179. 



52 

Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, was just dead. 
He had left behind him enormous wealth, which had 
been accumulated, as is proved from a statement in 
the handwriting of his successor, by the same un- 
scrupulous practices which had brought about the 
first revolt against the church. He had been corrupt 
in the distribution of his own patronage, and he had 
sold his interest with others. No Catholic prelate in 
the old easy times had more flagrantly abused the 
dispensation system. 'Every year he made profits 
by admitting children to the cure of souls' for 
money. He used a graduated scale in which the 
price for inducting an infant into a benefice varied 
with the age, children under fourteen not being inad- 
missible if the adequate fees were forthcoming."* 

"The position of bishops in the Church of Eng- 
land has been from the first anomalous. The Epis- 
copate was violently separated from the Papacy, to 
which it would have preferred to remain attached, 
and, to secure its obedience, it was made depen- 
dent on the crown. The method of episcopal ap- 
pointments, instituted by Henry VIII. as a tem- 
porary expedient and abolished under Edward as 
an unreality, was re-established by Elizabeth, not 
certainly because she believed that the invocation 
of the Holy Ghost was required for the complete- 

* Froude, XL, p. 100. 



53 

ness of an election which her own choice had al- 
ready determined, not becanse the bishops obtained 
any gifts or grace in their consecration which she 
herself respected, but because the shadowy form 
of an election, with a religious ceremony follow- 
ing it, gave them the semblance of spiritual inde- 
pendence, the semblance without the substance, 
which qualified them to be the instruments of the 
system which she desired to enforce. 

"They were tempted to presume on their phan- 
tom dignity, till the sword of a second Cromwell 
taught them the true value of their apostolic de- 
scent ; and we have a right to regret that the ori- 
ginal theory of Cranmer was departed from — that 
being officers of the crown, as much appointed by 
the sovereign as the lord chancellor, the bishops 
should not have worn openly their real character 
and received their appointments immediately by 
letters-patent without further ceremony. 

"To an episcopacy so constituted the most ex- 
treme Presbyterian would not long have objected. 

"No national object was secured by the transpa- 
rent fiction of the election and consecration. The 
invocation of the Holy Spirit either meant nothing, 
and was a taking of sacred names in vain, or it 
implied that the Third' Person of the Trinity was, 
as a matter of course, to register the already de- 



54 

clared decision of the English sovereign. No ad- 
ditional respect was secured to the prelacy from 
the Catholics. Elizabeth, when they provoked her. 
threatened to depose them ; and when the Howards 
and the Talbots and the Stanleys, with their at- 
tendant satellites of knights and esquires, surren- 
dered their hopes of revolution, their reconciliation 
with the Church of England was not made more 
easy to them by the possible regularity of a ques- 
tioned ceremony at Lambeth. 

"But neither Elizabeth, nor later politicians of 
Elizabeth's temperament, desired the Church of 
England to become too genuine. It has been 
more convenient to leave an element of unsound- 
ness at the heart of an institution which, if sin- 
cere, might be dangerously powerful. The wisest 
and best of its bishops have found their influence 
impaired, their position made equivocal by the ele- 
ment of unreality which adheres to them. A feel- 
ing approaching to contempt has blended with the 
reverence attaching to their position, and has pre- 
vented them from carrying the weight in the coun- 
cils of the nation which has been commanded by 
men of no greater intrinsic eminence in other pro- 
fessions. Pretensions which many of them would 
have gladly abandoned have connected their office 
with a smile. The nature of it has, for the most 



55 

part, filled the sees with men of second-rate abili- 
ties. The latest and most singular theory about 
them is that of the modern English Neo-Catholic, 
who disregards his bishop's advice, and despises 
his censures ; but looks on him, nevertheless, as 
some high-bred, worn-out animal, useless in him- 
self, but infinitely valuable for some mysterious 
purpose of spiritual propagation. 

' ' ' Too late ' is written against a change at the 
present day. The apostolic succession has become 
the first article of the creed of half the clergy, and 
religious forms are only malleable in the fervent 
heat of genuine belief. But to play with sacred 
things is never ventured with impunity. The re- 
tention of the consecration alone rendered possible 
the attitude of the prelacy which cost Laud and 
Charles I. their heads. The revival of the magical 
theory of the priesthood, which depends upon it, 
is the chief cause of the hostility between the 
teaching of the Church and modern science. It 
has cut off the clergy from all healthy influence 
over intellect and practice. It has dwarfed reli- 
gion into opinion or childish superstition, and now, 
at last, is betraying life and the world to a god- 
less secularity ." * 

We return, in conclusion, to the words of the 
* Froude, " Hist, of England," XII. pp. 577-579. 



56 

text. They have a sad application to the departed 
glories of a once living Church, a faithful mother 
of saints. What once was, has for ever passed 
away. There is " the name of being alive," but 
long did the coldness of death reign in the land 
of Augustine, Anselm, and St. Thomas of Can- 
terbury. In crime, violence, and blood the cross 
of Augustine went down, and the candlestick of 
England went out in the blank night. The same 
hand that once evangelized the Saxon soil can 
alone bring back a second spring, and the living 
Church shall rise upon the ashes of desolation. 
A second temple rises upon the ruins^ of the old. 
Canterbury is gone and Durham is gone ; York 
and Winchester have passed away. They are 
among the memories of grace and greatness lost. 
Their names shall be mentioned no more among 
the living. But Westminster and Beverly, Hex- 
ham and Northampton, and other sees arise to 
tell of a brighter future. Hope kindles in the 
dawn of this second spring. Arise, Jerusalem of our 
fatherland! "Arise, shine, for thy light is come, 
and the glory of God is risen upon thee ! " 



♦ t 

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THE 

ENGLISH REFORMATION. 

a aecture 

DELIVERED IN ST. ANN'S CHURCH 

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VERY REV. THOMAS S. PRESTON, V.G. 



Stenographically Reported for the Publisher, 



NEW YOftK : 
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1878. 



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